Page 72 of My Highland Rogue
“Would you tell me what I did?” she said. “Are you angry with me? What is it, Gordon?”
He only shook his head, wishing she would return to the Hall.
“Thank you for everything,” he said, his manners finally coming to the fore. “You’ve been very generous.”
“Why are you treating me like we’re strangers? You told me you loved me. You asked me to marry you.”
He looked up at the clear blue, unforgiving Scottish sky. He would forever remember that color. This day, this morning with its winter chill would always strike him as the end. Not of life, but of innocence, perhaps. Or a certain era where he believed that it was possible to achieve his goals. To be happy as he’d always imagined. Those hopes were forever dashed.
“I can’t marry you, Jennifer.”
“Why?”
She was not going to let it go, was she? She was not going to accept that everything had changed until he said the words.
“I’m going back to London, Jennifer. It’s best if we forgot this interlude. That’s all it was. It didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t real.”
She grabbed her skirt and stepped over the edge of the foundation, marching through the flower bed toward him.
Her cheeks weren’t simply pink now. They were red, and there was fury in her eyes. She’d always had a temper, and it was out in full force.
“What do you mean an interlude?” Her voice was this side of a shout. “What, you came back to Adaire Hall to amuse yourself? Oh, my father isdying, but in the meantime I can fool this poor bumpkin of a lass? Who in the blazes do you think you are, Gordon McDonnell?”
“That’s the problem, Jennifer,” he said, the words slipping out of him. “I’m not Gordon McDonnell.” His voice was nearly as loud as hers.
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither did I. Until Sean spelled it out for me. I’m not who you think I am. I’m not even who I thought I was.” He told her about what Betty had done. “Harrison is Sean’s son. I’m the rightful Earl of Burfield.”
He knew the second it occurred to her.
Her face turned ashen as her eyes widened. “Then...”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m your brother.”
She stared at him, unable to get beyond that one thought. It echoed in her brain the same way sound reverberated in the Clan Hall when it was empty.
“You’re my brother.” Even the words sounded wrong. “You can’t be.”
He didn’t say anything, and it was his silence that overwhelmed the echo.
“You have to be wrong,” she finally said.
He still didn’t speak, only looked at her with his beautiful blue eyes.
“You have to be wrong,” she repeated.
“Not according to Sean. He wanted to purge his conscience, tell me what Betty had done. I don’t think he would have said anything if I hadn’t told him we were going to marry.”
She stared up at him.
“Betty wanted a better life for her child and stole mine. I could almost understand the impulse, but she played God. The worst thing was that she knew how I felt about you. She knew, and she never said a word.”
“This can’t be real.”
His smile was soft and incredibly sad.
“We don’t look alike,” she said.
